Currently various computer-based applications manage and track interactions between people in conjunction with, for example, a sales process. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that incorporate sales force automation methodologies typically focus on pipeline management and on monitoring the sales process between known endpoints but the current CRM systems cannot identify a new endpoint or provide a guided process to a new endpoint.
Social Network Theory has evolved to characterize the behavior of “referral networks.” Researchers have described mathematically the multiple levels of relationships existing among networks of people, for example, the situation where two friends, Jim and Fred, may see each other every day at the gym (high personal relationship strength) but never discuss business (low professional relationship strength). Further, social network theorists have shown that networks exhibit predictable behaviors at the macro and micro levels. As the networks grow, they tend to preferentially attach to the more connected nodes, with the “rich getting richer”.
Bridges between networks (particularly between highly connected nodes) that span enterprises are important for sales prospecting purposes. Studies of connections among these networks demonstrated what might appear to be counter-intuitive: when it comes to finding a job, our “weak social links” are more important than the more cherished, strong, relationships, indicating that groups of tightly coupled friendship circles connect to other groups of tightly coupled friendships via “bridges” that sharply broaden the job search space.
Although Social Network Theory has established that evaluating a person's social network can generate high quality contacts, analysis of social relationship information to identify and quantify referral routes to a desired person or company has not been incorporated into computer-based applications. In particular, the identification of “invisible” referral routes has not been addressed, e.g., Fred went to school with the Vice President of Purchasing at a particular company Jim has as a sales target.